That fine balance...

Once upon a time, I was a canning nut. I scavenged the Boyne City farmers' market for pickling cukes, even though I hate pickles; I bought pecks of tomatoes and peaches, and made more kinds of jams than I care to remember. Everyone I knew started giving me their old jars, and I made things like dilly beans, even though I didn't like those, either. What was I thinking?!
Eventually, the charm wore off. I came to realize that I was never going to have chickens in the backyard, or incorporate the plans from Mother Earth News for building a greenhouse from old windows, or hooking up my exercise bike to power the house. Not that any of those things are bad ideas. I just didn't have the time or the know-how, and it seemed that the pay-off was not worth finding the time or learning how. But, my adventures in canning did teach me a few tricks that have come in handy in the kitchen over the years, and as it turned out, there are definitely some things that are worth making yourself. By the way, pickles are not one of them, especially if you don't like pickles in the first place!

Jam is totally worth it. One of my favorites is apple pie jam. (Thank you, Linda Lou from the GardenWeb site canning and preserving forum.) I'll tell you more about that this fall, when it's time to make it. Strawberry freezer jam; also totally worth it. I like the freezer variety because it tastes more like fresh strawberries, and you don't have to worry about all the berries floating to the top of the jar, in an unappetizing grayish-red mess, leaving a puddle of jelly in the bottom. My completely insane friend, Tressa, made blueberry-lavender jam for wedding favors when she got married this summer. That one is definitely worth repeating, although perhaps not to the tune of 150 half pints cooked in a Chicago-size apartment kitchen.

Taking advantage of the blanching water to get some peaches ready for a crisp.

Blanched tomatoes waiting to be peeled. Look at how those skins are splitting!

Some things I have found to work best as kind of a blend. After reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, some of my book club girlfriends and I got together to make the tomato sauce recipe from the book. We started early in the morning, and finished late at night, completely bespeckled with tomato bits. All that work rendered not nearly enough sauce, and we found ourselves judging which of our dinner guests were "sauce-worthy," kind of like Elaine from "Seinfeld"'s judgement about the "sponge-worthiness" of her various man friends.

With the tomato sauce, I have arrived at a compromise. Each fall, I still go to the farmers' market and buy at least a peck of Roma tomotoes. I faithfully blanch them (although I did a few peaches first, for a peach crisp to go with dinner), peel off those skins and squeeze out the seeds. Then, into the blender they go, sometimes with a bit of jalepeno, for winter chili. I fill up those rectangular freezer containers, label away, and everything goes into the freezer. Mason jars have been known to be called up, too. I've had great luck freezing these, as long as they're not overfilled.
 No standing over a hot pot for hours, waiting for the sauce to boil down, and more hours over a hot pot to can it. In fact, the only hot pot is the one for the blanching, and I only had that going for 30 minutes or less. I worked out quite the little assembly line this year, of coring and "x-ing," into boiling water, into ice bath, into colander, where I amassed my tomatoes until they were all blanched. And from there, I finished preparing them from the freezer, while watching The Travel Channel. If only Anthony Bourdain had been in Tuscany, my life would have been complete!
I love being able to take these containers out of the freezer all winter long, instead of buying cans of tomatoes. They make great sauce, chili, vegetable soup base, and the list goes on and on. Yum!

Labeling the ones with jalepenos!